When a silver halide color photographic material is imagewise exposed and then subjected to color development, an oxidized aromatic primary amine developing agent reacts with a dye forming coupler (hereinafter referred to as a "coupler") to form a color image.
Certain conditions are generally understood as being required for such couplers when used in silver halide color photographic materials. For example, they should have good stability, processing aptitude, and color forming properties, they should provide color images having good hue, and fastness; and they should be inexpensive and have good production aptitude.
Phenol type couplers and naphthol type couplers have been heretofore employed as cyan couplers. Particularly, 1-naphthol type couplers are widely employed in color negative photographic light-sensitive materials since dyes formed therefrom have an absorption maximum (.lambda..sub.max) in a long wavelength region and less subsidiary absorption in a green region Thus, they are excellent in terms of color reproduction. In addition, these couplers have good color forming properties are inexpensive and have good production aptitude.
Unfortunately, widely employed phenol type couplers and naphthol type couplers, such as 2-alkylcarbamoyl 1-naphthol type couplers, do not provide color images having a sufficiently high density when photographic light-sensitive materials containing these couplers are processed in a bleaching or bleach-fixing step of color development processing using a bleaching or bleach-fixing solution, being exhausted or having a weak oxidation power. It is believed that this phenomenon occurs because of reduction fading of cyan dyes due to ferrous ions formed in the bleaching or bleach-fixing step. Furthermore, these couplers have poor fastness.
The aforementioned disadvantages with naphthol type couplers can be addressed by substituting an aryl group for an alkyl group in the substituent of the carbamoyl group on the 2-position to form 2-arylcarbamoyl-1-naphthol type couplers as described, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,488,193. However, the latter disadvantage can not be wholly solved by using these arylcarbamoyl substituted couplers Therefore, it is not necessarily preferred to employ these couplers in light of the resulting poor preservability of the color image.
On the other hand, 1-naphthol type couplers including particular substituents on the 5-position such as those described in JP-A-60-237448, JP-A-61-179437 and JP-A-61-179438 (the term "JP-A" as used herein means an "unexamined published Japanese patent application") address the above-described disadvantages and provide excellent characteristics. Unfortunately, when photo graphic materials containing these couplers are irradiated with light for long periods of time after development processing, brown colored staining occurs. Such staining is undesirable for silver halide color photographic materials since it reduces the color reproducibility of color images and visual sharpness. In addition, there is an affect on the quality of the white background in the images.
Polymer latexes have been found to reduce the decrease in cyan density due to using exhausted bleaching or bleach-fixing solutions (See EP-A-0294104). Although such an effect is recognized, the disclosed latexes are basically ineffective for preventing staining.